Glasses and Goblets
by prettyplease
Summary: Harry and Hermione? Ron and Hermione? Or even Malfoy and Crookshanks (unlikely but you never know...) any comments accepted, although flames will be incinerated by norbert
1. Amber and Russet leaves

1.  
Hermione stared out of the window, absent-mindedly doodling shapes on the desk with her wand. Autumn had just whirled into Hogwarts with a breath of cold air, and the leaves were beginning to turn amber and russet. She sighed. Autumn was such a beautiful season - after all, school began again. She'd been reading up on the troll rebellions in the last thousand years - she'd had a tip-off from the teacher that they might come up in a pop test at the beginning of the year, and couldn't wait to tell Harry and Ron about them. Strangely enough, they didn't seem particularly interested. She sighed again. Harry Potter. The name whirled around in her brain, and she mentally drew a couple of hearts around it.   
Somebody laughed. Hermione started, woken abruptly from her daydream by Snape's cold, whispery voice in her ear.   
"Miss Granger, is there any particular reason why you are drawing love-hearts in the air?"  
Hermione looked up, and realised that the space just in front of her wand had small pink heart-shaped smoke-rings coming out of it. She blushed hard. Everyone turned to look at her, and Ron buried his face in his hands.  
"Miss Granger, 10 points from Gryffindor for not paying attention. What have I just been saying?"  
Hermione racked her brains.  
"Um..."  
"I thought so. Perhaps, Miss Granger, you would like to pay attention now. This is very much out of character for you. Perhaps it has something to do with the little...pink...hearts you have been drawing?"  
Snape paused on the word 'pink', as if it somehow made it worse that they were coloured.  
"And, just in case you should consider daydreaming again in my classes, I'm going to give you all a test in next week's lesson, on what we have been learning about today. Miss Granger, I suggest you remember to turn up to the detention I have given you, so that you will be prepared for the test. Unfortunately, I very much doubt that making smoke rings will appear on it."  
The class snickered, and then groaned as they reacted to the news of the test.   
"I sincerely hope, class, that that was not a criticism of my teaching methods? Good. If you wish to complain about the test," Snape looked around for guilty faces, "you may blame Miss Granger. However, please could you do so once you have left the room, so that we can concentrate on the lesson in hand, which is, for those of you who have been too busy doodling, Potions. Is that all right?"   
Hermione sank further into her chair, severely embarrassed and determined to at least listen for the remaining twenty minutes.  
***  
Once she was outside, she waited for Harry and Ron to catch up.  
"Harry, Ron, how did he do that? I wasn't intending for the smoke-rings to appear when I was doodling. Oh, I feel so awful about it. Everyone was laughing, and I'm sure Snape doesn't like me anymore. Besides which, I think I may stay under my duvet for the rest of the term, and become a hermit. I will NEVER live this down."  
"Hermione," Harry said, "May I draw your attention to the fact that Snape never has, and never will like any of us three, so your little smoke ring episode is not likely to change that."  
"Yeah," Ron interjected. "Mind you, that charm he used was quite good. It traces the line where your wand has just been, I think. To prevent people doodling or sending messages by tracing them in the air. That's what Lavender said, anyway. There's supposed to be a clock somewhere where the hands start to move backwards if you stare too hard at it."  
"And since when has Lavender been the expert on charms? Last time I looked, she still hadn't worked out how to tie her shoelaces properly," said Hermione, rounding on Ron.  
"Look, Hermione, I'm sure he didn't mean it like that..."  
"Well, I don't care," she stormed. "Just leave me alone, both of you."  
And with that, she yelled 'Chocolate Teapot' (Percy had changed the password yesterday) at the portrait of the Fat Lady, ran through the Gryffindor common room in tears, and slammed the door to the girls' dormitories so hard the crystals on the chandelier tinkled.  
"What's up with her?" Fred Weasley asked.  
"It's probably PMS," said Ron, gloomily.  
"Aaah," said Fred. "George and I made some stuff yesterday - induces those sort of symptoms in men...mood swings, tendency to throw tokens of affection back in your face, that kind of thing. We nearly managed to give one to Professor Flitwick today, but he threw his tea away because it got cold. Shame really, we've not managed to try it out on anyone properly yet. Hey, Ron..."  
He heard the slam of the door as Ron and Harry scrambled through, up to the boys' dormitories.  
He chuckled. "Just kidding…" he said. 


	2. Attractive Inner Qualities

2.  
Harry, Ron and Hermione were all sitting in the Gryffindor common room. It was winter now, but the common room was toasty, because of the large fire in the huge fireplace on the other wall.  
Harry groaned. "Have you seen how little there is on troll rebellions in these books? I still need 10 more inches and I've covered everything I can find. I've done all the major rebellions, and the minor ones as well, all the way back to 1100."  
"What's the point?" Ron said. "We're never going to need this anyway. No-one's going to offer you a job because you could describe in minute detail Ulric the Ugly's battle strategy, or Bertha the Bad-Breathed's make of club, are they?"  
"No," said Hermione, "but maybe if you applied yourselves more during the lessons you might actually have learnt something that you could write about, rather than doing it in the last five minutes before the actual class. I finished hours ago."  
"Shut up, Hermione," said Ron.   
Hermione gave him a look that would have melted iron, and he tensed, waiting for the blow. But luckily for him, the bell rang and instead she grabbed her books and walked hurriedly off to Professor Binn's lesson. Ron breathed a sigh of relief, picked up his quill, wand and books, and followed suit. Harry scrawled 'The End' in big letters on the end of his parchment, and followed him. He wondered why Hermione had been so stressed and sort of distant recently. The pressure they were under to do well in their O.W.L.'s was heavy, he knew, but Hermione had never been one to get upset over school work before. In fact, she rather seemed to enjoy it. Harry couldn't understand why - playing Quidditch was so much better than being stuck in a musty classroom all day.   
He sat down at his desk, fully occupied with a day-dream in which he had just won the house-cup for the seventh time running having beaten Malfoy to the Snitch at the last minute. As he sat down, he half-heard Lavender Brown and one of her sillier friends giggle behind him.  
"Just ignore them," hissed Ron, "they aren't worth it."  
But Harry wasn't listening. Malfoy had just been expelled for breathing, and Cho Chang had just rushed up and told him how much she adored his skill at Quidditch, how brave he was, how…  
Harry never did discover his third most attractive inner quality, because at that moment Professor Binns strode in and shut the door with a bang. His daydream evaporated, and he turned his attention to the History of Magic lesson.   
Hermione, however, couldn't concentrate. Sitting the other side of Harry, she suddenly realised that she had never realised before how wonderful he smelt. It was like freshly- cut grass, (probably from playing Quidditch), and apples, and a strange, exotic scent she couldn't quite put a name to. She wished she could bottle it, and maybe keep it somewhere so that he would always be with her. Don't be silly, she told herself. Harry has plenty of admirers. Lavender Brown for one. She really annoyed Hermione, with her giggling and whispering behind corners. Harry would never notice her, Hermione, his best friend since what felt like forever. Her teeth were good, she knew, down to the brace she'd just had taken off, but her hair was so like a haystack that people would probably start looking for needles in it soon. If only she were a little taller, a little slimmer…maybe then…  
She started as Professor Binns dropped last week's homework on her desk. She had got full marks again. The note read, in his spidery handwriting,  
'Excellent again. Perhaps we should discuss the possibility of you taking Advanced History of Magic for your O.W.L.s, with extra tutoring.'  
Hermione would have been flattered, except that she had already had the same offer from every teacher she had, with the exception of Snape, who still hadn't forgiven her for that lesson in October. She blushed just thinking about it.  
Ron groaned and snatched her paper away. "Top marks again? Hermione, how do you do it? It's just like turning on a tap for you, isn't it. Names, dates, makes of troll club…it's all here."  
Hermione snatched it back. "Well, maybe if you applied yourself…"  
Ron groaned again, and rolled his eyes. "Save the lecture, Mother."  
Professor Binns rapped his wand on his desk, and everyone turned to the front and began to take notes on 'Great troll leaders of the 13th Century.' Hermione mentally pushed all thoughts of Harry as far away as possible, and began to write. 


End file.
